🔗 Share this article

As a a teenager growing up during a time marked by conflict, dishonesty, discrimination, racial bias, gender inequality. But no one seems angry by these issues. People see minor progress in social equality as having solved our issues completely though that falls short.”

It’s March 2015, and I’ve done it I had cracked inequality. Present in the basement room of Modern Art Oxford for my regional heat of the Articulation prize, I truly believe that perhaps I just introduced the audience of parents and teachers to the idea of feminism. I’m very pleased with myself.

The Contest

The Articulation prize is an event aimed at older teens, between 16 and 19, who are given a brief period to present about an artwork they select. I learned about it from the leader of my college, and his room I frequently visited just weeks before the competition. During school, I performed well but chatty and often unfocused. I felt everything acutely often becoming overwhelmed and tearful.

My approach was an all-or-nothing perspective on academics: either be the best or don’t bother. During our meeting, we discussed my decision to abandon a history course soon after of starting because I didn’t think it would be possible for me to finish top graded. Life isn’t about extremes,” he urged.

An Opportunity

Along with my longsuffering art teacher, the head of the college saw that the competition proved exactly the opportunity I required – since I loved art AS-level, and was suitably gobby as part the institution’s rag-tag debate club. He proposed I develop a talk for a preliminary school-level round. Recalling now, it seems no one else participated.

Selecting a Topic

I chose to speak on the artist’s pharmacy installations, viewed previously at his 2012 retrospective at Tate Modern (a related print is still stuck on the wall behind my desk). I’d seen Hirst’s work for the first time as a child in north Devon, the north Devon town my elder relative was raised, and where the artist had a restaurant, its name, full of preserved sea creatures, and walls covered with tablet designs. I loved that the art seemed humorous and rebellious, and that he got away with calling whatever as artistic. I loved that my relative disapproved. Above all, I loved that, since the artwork installations were named song names from a punk record, I could say “Sex” (Band name) several times during the talk. I felt like the most radical young thinker of my generation.

The Outcome

During the local round, nine other participants spoke, each presenting had better historical references, offered less unqualified, broad claims, and said “bollocks” less. I was awarded third place. As a teenager who put almost all self-esteem to success, this would usually meant a devastating outcome. Yet then, the fact that appreciated my talk, and had laughed precisely where I had wanted, proved sufficient.

A New Path

When the organizers asked to give my talk again, now during a conference at the British Museum, I submitted my application to read history of art at Oxford. Before the competition, I had thought I was going to apply literature or languages, but certainly not at Oxbridge, believing there I couldn’t become “top ranked”. Yet the experience had emboldened me and made me believe that my opinions were worth sharing, even when I didn’t speak the lingo. I no longer required perfection: I just needed to add my perspective on things.

Finding Purpose

Talking about art – and finding ways to make people laugh during presentations – soon turned into my north star. My Articulation journey came full circle when I was invited back this spring as the inaugural graduate judge for a competition round.

The competition gave me confidence outside academics: not that I would accomplish major feats, but that I didn’t have to. I no longer needed to covet perfection; I embraced personal expression. I went from being nervous and fragile – passionate but quick to anger – into a person trusting in their capabilities. Perfection wasn’t to be perfect. For the first time, being genuine outweighed importance over than flawlessness.

Gratitude

I remain thankful to the sixth-form head who took time to comprehend me during my years as an obstinate and emotional teenager, rather than simply rolling his eyes (in retrospect, some irritation might have been entirely justified). Life isn’t is absolute success or failure; I learned that attempts matter even without guarantees of “victory”.